Crosswalk.com aims to offer the most compelling biblically-based content to Christians on their walk with Jesus. Crosswalk.com is your online destination for all areas of Christian Living – faith, family, fun, and community. Each category is further divided into areas important to you and your Christian faith including Bible study, daily devotions, marriage, parenting, movie reviews, music, news, and more.

Ashamed of Shame Itself

Last night as Aileen and I taught some of the teens at church (as we
do every Wednesday evening) we encountered the concepts of guilt and
shame. It is a tricky concept this, as it may be positive or negative
depending on the context. The Bible makes it clear that, in their
innocence, before they invited sin into the world, Adam and Eve were
“naked and unashamed.” Written after the fact and written at a time
when people could hardly conceive of nakedness as being anything but
shameful, these words are clearly meant to make people think and to
consider a world without shame. Shame, after all, in at least one of
its forms, is product of guilt. Shame comes about as we realize our
guilt or our inadequacy. Shame comes as we compare ourselves to a
better standard or even as we compare ourselves to another standard
(which is, more often than not, other people). So while it is a product
of sin and a necessity only in an imperfect world, it is also a gift,
of sorts. Shame is an aspect of God’s common grace that keeps us from
expressing ourselves in ways that would otherwise result in serious
consequences.

Some time ago I read The Death of the Grown-up,
a fascinating book by Diana West and one that seeks to answer the
question of “Where have all the grown-ups gone?” The book’s subtitle is
“How America’s Arrested Development is Bringing Down Western
Civilization.” I suppose that says it all. West has studied this
phenomenon and has determined that it is one that is going to have
serious repercussions. One section of the book that caught my attention
deals with the loss of shame.

Shame is becoming increasingly foreign in our culture. We hear of
the way many teens act these days—with 13 year old girls propositioning
their male friends and dispensing sexual favors on the school bus; with
men and boys alike proudly discussing just how much pornography they
consume; with the sexual preferences of movie stars being discussed in
the evening news; with commercials for sexual enhancers constantly
playing on television. Where has shame gone?

West traces the decline of shame to the death of the notion of
obscenity, especially in the world of art. “By the time the courts, in
effect, declared obscenity was dead, they had killed something vital to
a healthy society: the faculty of judgment that attempts to distinguish
between what is obscene and what is not obscene—the avowedly ‘grown-up’
sensibility of an outmoded authority figure who had long relied on a
proven hierarchy of taste and knowledge until it was quite suddenly
leveled. From this leveling came another casualty: society’s capacity,
society’s willingness, to make even basic distinctions between trash
and art.”

This has led to all manner of offensive, vulgar art being paraded in
front of us, even if that art is just plain bad. The question is not,
as it should be, “is it good art?” Rather, people simply cry
“censorship” and allow anything to be displayed, no matter how vulgar,
no matter how devoid of artistic merit. We can no longer distinguish
between trash and art. Exempting art from censorship laws, effectively
concluding that there is no such thing as obscenity, has had
consequences.

“Once the law balked at recognizing obscenity, the populace began to
doubt the very basis for shame. With no legal, institutional support
for consensus, little wonder the bottom fell out from under morality.”
As obscenity became a thing of the past, so too did it’s necessary
consequence: shame. Shame is increasingly missing from our culture. We
do things, watch things, enjoy things, participate in things that at
any other time and in any other place would be considered shameful.
Politicians show little remorse, little shame, when their dirty sexual
deeds are exposed. Parents cavort with children, acting like children.
“Shamelessness sheds light on why it is that American matrons are more
likely to host sex-toy parties than Tupperware parties; why the Major
Leagues showcase Viagra ads at home plate; why a presidential
fund-raiser for GOP candidates includes a well-endowing—that is,
contributing—porn star and pornographer; and why at grocery store
checkouts shoppers can check out “hot sex tips” along with a loaf of
bread. We have all learned—or at least we have all been taught—that the
mental blush is superseded by the genital tingle.”

The paradox is something Christians know well. “Less restraint
doesn’t necessarily deliver greater freedom.” It should be not
surprising that the “land of the free” is also the land with more laws
than just about any other nation in the world. With rules comes
freedom—not with a lack of restraint. Humans being what we are, we rely
on rules to keep us acting within the bounds of morality and within the
bounds of shame. When these rules are tossed out and when shame
disappears, so too does our willingness to restrain ourselves. With no
concept of obscenity there is no shame; with no shame, anything goes.
“In a shameless culture…self restraint is continually undermined.”

“By the twenty-first century, shame and embarrassment have zero
association with sexuality—or so we are endlessly, numbingly
instructed—and, correspondingly, an infantile lack of behavioral
restraint may be observed in everything from freak dancing, to
‘super-size’ eating, to McMansion-building. Without the concept of
obscenity, without reason for shame, the ‘self’ in self-control sees no
greater, larger, socially significant point in holding back.”

What has happened to shame? Well, it appears that shame has been put
to death. “Culturally speaking, obscenity is all but legally obsolete,
and shame is a kind of secular sin—a symptom of ‘hang-ups,’ of
repression, of inhibition, of liberty lost.”

The only thing our society tells us to be ashamed of, it seems, is shame itself.